The rapid advances in computer and software technologies has allowed the gaming industry to offer a large variety of highly sophisticated and entertaining gaming options to casino patrons. For example, a typical casino offers a variety of electronic wagering games, such as video and mechanical slots, video poker, blackjack video keno, video bingo, video pachinko, craps, roulette, and the like. These games are typically implemented as software applications that run on special-purpose computerized gaming machines. The gaming machines are, in turn, connected into gaming networks, such as an Internet Protocol (IP) based local or wide area networks. The size of such gaming networks frequently reaches several thousand gaming machines.
Typically, gaming networks use a hub-and-spoke topology, in which gaming machines are connected to one or more centralized gaming servers. The gaming server(s) manage and control operation of the gaming applications, as well as provide various services to the gaming machines, such as billing and user authentication services. The size of these gaming network and a large amount of network traffic generated by the gaming machines and servers in a gaming network having hub-and-spoke architecture can sometimes result in difficulties related to configuration, management, and resource allocation. Moreover, there can be inherent limitations that exist in this type of network architecture that sometimes impede the development of gaming applications that run across multiple gaming machines, particularly when attempting to provide highly dynamic and interactive gaming environment to casino patrons.